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The National Writing Project (NWP) conducts four and five-week professional development summer workshops that K-16 expert teachers consistently praise as transformative. The central question posed in this dissertation focuses on whether the NWP workshop, based on a teachers-teaching-teachers design, could also serve as an effective professional development vehicle for transforming and preparing graduate student instructors (GSIs) to teach first-year composition. This question arises out of the need for knowledge-building graduate student preparation programs that keep pace with the increased demands of the first-year composition course and of the first-year composition students. Methods used to explore the feasibility of the NWP to prepare GSIs involve an analytic autoethnography and two survey research instruments. In the autoethnography, the researcher views the various processes experienced throughout the NWP workshop through the twin lenses of Transformation Learning (TL) theory and constructivist learning pedagogy. In the survey research, the researcher investigates the GSI participants' and local site directors' perceptions concerning the value and benefits of the NWP workshop to prepare GSIs for teaching writing. The researcher's analytic autoethnography reveals the transformative effects of the NWP experience on the teacher-frames of the researcher and of those peers attending the same NWP institute, while the surveys of the GSI participants and the local site directors reveal similarly positive effects of NWP pedagogy for preparing GSI for teaching writing. Based on these findings, combined with foundational support from the NWP meta-analysis of student writing outcomes of NWP participating teachers generated by the Local Sites Research Initiatives (LSRI), along with the independent Inverness Associates' studies focusing on the perceptions of teachers involved in the NWP's New-Teacher Initiative (NTI), the researcher recommends a pilot project involving a NWP designed pre-semester workshop for graduate student instructors prior to teaching first-year composition.

This exploratory research study investigated perceptions of practicum counselor trainees to help understand how prepared they believed they were for supervision. Based upon common elements of various developmental models of supervision, this study examined counselor trainees’ perceptions of their preparedness for practicum supervision based upon: (a) expectations of supervision; (b) understanding of the structure and formats used in supervision; (c) receptivity to and use of feedback in supervision; and (d) the evaluative component of supervision. This study also investigated possible explanations as to what factors may lead counselor trainees to feel more or less prepared for practicum supervision. The participants in this study were 156 counseling students enrolled in practicum courses at 27 CACREPaccredited counseling programs across the United States during the spring semester of 2005. The instrument used in this study was the Counselor Trainee Preparedness Perceptions Survey - Practicum Supervision (CTPPS-PS) survey, developed by the researcher. The CTPPS-PS was administered anonymously online through an Internet link distributed to students by practicum instructors or in paper format. To minimize the effects of varying practicum supervision experiences incurred by the sample participants, data collection was restricted to a 30-day period during the first half of the academic semester. Findings from this research revealed significant positive relationships between counselor trainees' overall perceptions of preparedness for practicum supervision and perceived preparation for various aspects of supervision. For the various aspects of supervision, the strongest relationships were found between overall perceptions of preparedness and preparation for what is required in supervision and to accept guidance and support through supervision. The weakest relationship was between overall perceptions and preparation for supervisory evaluation. These research findings also revealed significant positive relationships between counselor trainees' overall perceptions of preparedness for practicum supervision and perceptions of practicum supervision experience to date as well as with comfort experienced with receiving feedback in supervision. Another significant finding was consistently higher overall perceptions of preparedness for trainees being supervised by part-time faculty and for trainees attending universities with doctoral counseling programs. The findings of this study may encourage counselor educators to augment their programs and courses with supervision preparation strategies so that students may begin practicum feeling better prepared than the participants in this study. For supervisors, findings from this study can form the basis for a dialogue at the onset of supervision to determine the needs of counselor trainees, and thus help mitigate potential obstacles to practicum experiences resulting from areas lacking in preparation for supervision.